Tuesday, December 02, 2008

WHY BEAUTY MATTERS
(adapted from Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge)

Beauty is powerful, perhaps the most powerful thing on earth. It is therefore also dangerous, because beauty matters.

First, beauty speaks. Think of what it is like to be caught in traffic for more than an hour. Horns blaring, people shouting obscenities, exhaust pouring into your windows, suffocating you. Then remember what it's like to come into a beautiful place, a garden or a meadow or a quiet beach. There is room for your soul. It expands. You can breathe again. You can rest. It is good. All is well.

That is what beauty says: All shall be well.

Beauty also invites. Recall what it is like to hear a truly beautiful piece of music. It captures you, you want to sit down and just drink it in. Music like this commands your attention, invites you to come more deeply into it. The same is true of a beautiful garden, or a cene in nature. You want to enter in, explore, partake of it, feast upon it. We describe a great book as "captivating" - it draws you in, holds your attention. You can't wait to get back to it, spend time with it. Beauty invites.

We do not merely want to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves. (C.S.Lewis, The Weight of Glory)
That's why, watching a dance or hearing a song, you don't just want to watch. You want to jump up and join in the dance, lift your voice and sing along. You want not just to experience it but to be beautiful. Beauty invites you in to join it, and we ache because we cannot.

Beauty comforts. There is something profoundly healing about it. That is why we send flowers to the bereaved. In the midst of their suffering and loss, only a gift of beauty says enough, or says it right. Beauty comforts. It soothes the soul.

Beauty inspires. That's why, watching Tai Yi dance, I wanted to get up and join a dsi and become like her, to dance like her. A teacher in the inner city explained why he insisted on putting a fountain and flowers in the courtyard of a building: "Because these children need to be inspired. They need to know that life can be better." Beauty inspires.

Beauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. Think of what it's like to behold a gorgeous sunset, or the ocean at dawn. Remember the ending of a great story. When a beautiful dance or a gorgeous piece of music comes to an end, we sigh. We yearn to linger, to experience it all our days. Beauty gives us a glimpse into eternity.

Sometimes the beauty is so deep it pierces us with longing. For what? For life as it was meant to be. Beauty reminds us of an Eden we have never known, but somehow know our hearts were created for. Beauty speaks of heaven to come, when all shall be beautiful. It haunts us with eternity. Beauty says, There is a glory calling to you. And if there is a glory, there is a source of glory. What great goodness could have possibly created this? Beauty draws us to God.

All these things are true for any experience of Beauty. But they are especially true when we experience the beauty of a woman - her eyes, her form, her voice, her heart, her spirit, her life. She speaks all of this far more profoundly than anything else in all creation. "For where is any author in the world Teaches beauty as a woman's eye?" (Shakespeare)

Beauty is without question the most essential of God's qualities and feminine qualities. It is also the most misunderstood. We know it has caused untold pain in the lives of women (and men too).

But why so much heartache over beauty? We don't ache over being geniuses, or fabulous hockey players. Women ache over the issue of beauty - they ache to be beautiful, to believe they are beautiful, and they worry over keeping it if ever they can find it.

Every woman is haunted by Eve in the core of her being. She knows, if only when she passes a mirror (or a reflective shop window), that she is not what she was meant to be. Remembering the glory that was once ours awakens our heart to an ache that has long gone unfulfilled. It's almost too much to hope for, too much to have lost.

Every little girl - and every little boy - is asking one fundamental question.
But they are different questions.

Little boys want to know, Do I have what it takes? All that rough and tumble, that superhero dress up and blasting off aliens' heads, all of that is a boy seeking to prove he does have what it takes. Boys are made in the image of a warrior God. A God of strength.

Little girls want to know, Am I lovely? The twirling skirts, the glittering tiaras, the dress-ups and spas - that's what it's all about, it's a longing to be pretty and to be seen. Girls are made in the image of a glorious God. A God of beauty.

Posted by nayrakroarual at 12:22 AM

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